legs, but yelping as soon as raw skin met raw skin. Her moans continued, one after the other, short pulses of sound that she couldn’t manage to stop.
Half-conscious, she was dragged upward, her moan erupting into a scream as some fabric was wrapped around her ruined skin.
Ms. Wykes’s voice sounded directly against her ear. “Now then, Ms. Thompson. There will be no more sneaking into my office? Will there?”
In response, Kandace could only manage another moan.
Jasper picked her up and, with the contact, Kandace sobbed brokenly. The world around her faded in, then out. She was being carried somewhere. Her bed? The infirmary? Home? Please, please let me go home. I’ll do better. I’ll do anything you want. Please, Mom. Mom. I just want to go home. I’ll be good. I’ll be so good.
The world went black.
She came to slowly, attempting to move her limbs. Her body burned. Oh God, it burned. And it ached. A shudder ran through her as she attempted to crack her eyes open, but it was too bright and she drew back, trying again. Reality swam in front of her and for a moment, she wondered if she was simply having a horrific nightmare. Her brain grasped to understand, to put her reality into context.
She was in the chapel, her arms strung up to each side of her, feet just touching the ground. Twelve students all sat in the pews in their red uniforms, heads bent. The teachers sat stoically in chairs against the opposite wall. Some stared at her nervously, others with contempt.
Her back burned so badly she didn’t think she could bear it, the light from the window behind her streaming in and heating her already scalded skin.
Kandace let her head loll forward, another deep shudder running through her body, nerve endings zinging with intolerable pain. Tears coursed down her cheeks and she let out a barely perceptible cry as the salt of her pain ran over her raw skin. Her gaze moved over the girls. Please don’t look up. Don’t see this. She could only imagine what she looked like, strung up like some alternate version of Christ, wearing only a bra and underwear, skin bloody and ruined. But she knew they’d be made to look. After all, she was there as an example for the rest of them. Repent. Obey. Or this will be you. Apparently, whatever injuries the other girls who’d been disciplined had sustained while she was there, hadn’t been enough of a show. This though? This was plenty.
“Please rise,” came Ms. Wykes’s voice. She was standing somewhere on Kandace’s right but Kandace didn’t bother trying to lift her head to see her. She didn’t have the strength. The girls rose slowly, lifting their gazes to her, some visibly drawing back, others standing in shocked silence while tears rolled down their cheeks.
The heat from the window beat into her injured flesh and a memory enveloped her, causing the pain to recede momentarily. Light had streamed into the attic where she and Scarlett used to play. It’d been beautiful, like a spotlight God had made just for them, not the god Lilith House described, but the one she’d felt in her spirit, and she and her friend had danced in its glow, twirling and whirling and dreaming the dreams of little girls whose lives stretched before them—wide open and full of possibility. She’d been innocent then, no mistakes, no failures. No regrets. Just unending grace. Why had she let go of that? Why had she given it up so willingly?
Kandace closed her eyes and pretended she was there now. She heard the words Scarlett had said, so long ago, when she’d found Kandace crying after her mother had rejected her once again: You’re stronger than you think you are, she’d whispered, taking her hand.
You’re stronger than you think you are. The words repeated in her head now, like a mantra, like a life raft in a sea of misery and pain.
Because the thing was, Scarlett had offered her that same grace even after she’d fallen. She’d reached out her hand but Kandace hadn’t taken it. Not that time.
She’d eventually been sent to Lilith House. And there was no grace here, only shame.
“If we confess our sins,” Ms. Wykes’s voice broke through her thoughts, “He is faithful and just and will forgive us and purify us from unrighteousness. Isn’t that right, Ms. Thompson?”
Kandace moved her eyes toward her but didn’t answer.